Note: This post was originally published in 2013, but we’ve given it a major update and added some current examples to keep things fresh. Let us know what you think in the comments section below! – Madeline Blasberg, Content Strategist

In this article, we’re going to look at pretty much everything you need to know about Facebook landing pages so that you can more bang for your buck with Facebook advertising.

We’ll look at why connecting your Facebook ad to a unique landing page is the way to go, how to create continuity between the ad and final destination, what critical elements you need to consider, and we’ll leave you with a few examples to inspire your next campaign.

Ready to dive in? Let’s do it!

A landing page will make or break your Facebook ad.It delivers more on every penny of your investment;
giving you more clicks, customers, and profits.

What is a Facebook Ad Landing Page?

It’s where you send all the people that click through your ad so that you can deliver a little more information and get them to grab hold of your offer in exchange for a payment or a piece of information (often an email address).

It’s easy to want to cheer when someone clicks through your Facebook ad (and we do…so, whoohoo!) but unless your landing page provides an easy path to your final goal (conversion), then your campaign isn’t worth the $$ you paid to get it off the ground. Yes, we’re a little biased, but it really is all about the landing page.

Whether you’re capturing leads with a free lead magnet, promoting a membership offer, or selling an e-commerce product/service, your landing page is your opportunity to close the deal – and if you don’t do it well, you’re letting leads (and money) slip through the cracks.

But for now, all you need to know is that a Facebook ad landing page is the page that your visitors are taken to after clicking on your ad.

Why You Need a Facebook Landing Page:

The No. 1 way to waste your money with paid ads is to have an offer that is inconsistent from ad to landing page.

You’ve paid good money to serve ads to a highly targeted group of Facebook’s 1.4 billion daily users – and you’re going to just leave them hanging on some homepage or static website?

We seriously hope not.

Facebook ads only generate a return on your investment if they’re able to drive conversions and they are only the first piece of the puzzle. A landing page takes the click across the finish line.

Don’t build on borrowed ground:

Facebook as an advertising platform is particularly fabulous because of its 1.4 billion daily users (and because of their unparalleled algorithms that let you precisely segment those 1.4 billion). Your message can reach an unprecedented number of people all within a single digital space.

But, what if Facebook disappeared tomorrow? Where would it leave your business?

If Facebook folds, all your fans and all their contact information fold along with it.

Of course, that scenario is highly unlikely, but the fact remains: if your audience only exists on Facebook, your relationship with them is at the mercy of the platform’s next algorithm change or business decision.

By creating a Facebook landing page that tracks them with the Facebook pixel and gets fans onto your email list, your audience has the opportunity to experience your content beyond social media. You can send them personalized messages about product announcements, upcoming events, and cool giveaways—and add them toautomated email sequences to ultimately turn them into customers.

The Power of a Consistent Offer

Consistency between your Facebook ad and landing page is key.

Just imagine you receive an invitation in the mail for a Halloween party. But when you show up on your friend’s doorstep (in full-on bunny gear), the door opens onto…a formal cocktail soiree with your boss. Oops. You didn’t get what you bargained for, right? And you’d probably turn & run. Well, when your landing page & ad don’t align, your traffic turns and runs too.

Your goal is a friction-less, frustration-free transition from ad to action. That means giving clear signals (…like a single call to action) and a streamlined path (art & copy that carries your audience along, reassuring them they are in the right place and that they can trust you to deliver on your promise).

Delivering this frictionless road trip involves a few different factors:

The same message – Most importantly, you should use the same headline (or a near identical variant).

The same great offer: Obviously you want to send people to the landing page that contains your delicious offer. Check your links & sales copy to make sure everything is copacetic.

Why Use a Landing Page and Not a Lead Ad?

Your Facebook ad is very versatile in the fact that you can point traffic to a number of different destinations, ranging from your Facebook business page, your website, a custom tab, a lead ad, or a high-converting landing page.

Our recommendation is that your business page and website should almost never be used as landing pages. That sounds harsh – but here’s why. By creating unique landing pages that are custom tailored to perfectly pair with your ads, you can get right to the point and easily test different variations. Your static website was not built to sell or persuade in the same way and it’s certainly not meant for quick tweaks & A/B tests.

The best idea is to try out a few different destinations to figure out what works best for your business and for the type of audience you’re trying to convert (ex. cold traffic vs. retargeted traffic, mobile vs. desktop).

We recommend that you:

Don’t send to your Facebook Business Page – Facebook business pages are crowded, chaotic, and don’t allow for a single call to action.

Facebook business pages are lousy landing pages – better built for community engagement than for a clear path to conversion.

Don’t send to your Facebook Custom Tab – While there’s a case to made for the value of never having to leave the Facebook platform, unless you take traffic into your own page or site, you’re not able to track them for retargeting ads.

Don’t send to your website – This is the easy way out, but experience has taught us that you’ll pay for it in the long run.

It’s true that linking to an external website (URL) gives you greater control of the content and design you incorporate into a landing page, it’s also true that your website isn’t tailored to each individual campaign – and therefore likely won’t convert as well as a custom landing page will.

Your landing page should be finely tuned, high-converting, and in alignment with exactly what you promised in your ad.

DO Send traffic to a high-converting landing page:

Directing traffic to a unique, high-converting landing page allows you to better position your offer, better qualify your leads (by explaining your offer in greater detail), and gather retargeting data from the Facebook pixel that is automatically-placed by Leadpages.

Unlike static web pages, landing pages have a singular purpose: to convert traffic into taking a single (valued) action – such as signing up for a webinar.

7 Key Elements of a Facebook Landing Page

Enticing offer – If your offer isn’t valuable and relevant to your target audience, no ad or landing page is going to be strong enough to convert those clicks into customers. You’ve got to bait the hook with something mouth-wateringly delicious.
Here are some ideas for effective Facebook ad lead magnets.

Power-house headline – Grab people’s attention and be both compelling and consistent by carrying the same headline through from the ad to the landing page, to the thank you/ confirmation page & email. Check out our tips for writing landing page headlines.

Sub-headline – Support the main headline with a little extra info.

Trustworthiness – Everything you do either builds up or breaks down your credibility. Include a clear privacy policy and elements of social proof to encourage your audience that you’re legitimate.

Sales copy – Your landing page should include a more in-depth description of what you’re offering. Try delivering this information in the form of bullet-points or a short video.

Single call to action (CTA) – Don’t beat around the bush. What is the one (ONE) single action that you hope your audience will take? This is the goal of the landing page and the point of ‘conversion.’ You’ve told them about what you’re offering, now how do people get it? Check out these calls to action that convert.

The Long & Short of itWondering how wordy your landing page copy should be?

Among copywriters, there’s much debate on this topic. Here’s what we suggest:

Write as little as you can, as well as you can to achieve your purpose

In the past, you probably selected Link Click optimization, which targets an audience that is most likely to click on the link in your ad. However, with Landing Page View optimization, you’re able to target people who are most likely to click on your Facebook ad AND wait for your landing page to fully load. (That’s kind of incredible, isn’t it?)

This new optimization lets you get even more precise in your targeting and get even more from your Facebook ad spend.

You can also take a look at clicks on your ad vs. landing page views, which should help you determine what element of your campaign is pulling its weight and where you can potentially make improvements.

This optimization requires that you have the Facebook pixel installed so that Facebook can recognize when the landing page has fully loaded. Thankfully, Leadpages places the pixel for you automatically. You’re welcome 🙂

A Few Facebook Landing Page Examples

Take a look at the following Facebook ad and Facebook landing page examples so that you can see how brands are able to create one cohesive, consistent, and compelling experience from the first click to the final action.

Jackie does an exceptional job of creating a cohesive experience for her traffic by carrying over the exact same image and similar messaging from her Facebook ad to the landing page. Her audience can’t help but know that they’ve landed in the right place and that Jackie has taken the first step towards delivering on her promise.

Take a look:

Falcon.io – Facebook ad & landing page example

This brand-level awareness campaign is strategically structured to highlight Falcon’s key benefits. They’ve repeated their headline (Manage Social Media More Efficiently), invited cold traffic to ‘Learn More’ and have served an offer (to request a demo) that is appropriate to an audience of people who are unfamiliar with their brand.

They also get bonus points for incorporating social proof above the fold and just before the submission form fields as a way to boost their credibility.

Creating a consistent experience doesn’t always require repeating the same image; you can also let your copy make the connection. In this case, the headline ‘Get Better Results by Changing What You Say About Your Business’ is featured throughout the Facebook ad and landing page. The business owner is prospecting for new leads and has wisely chosen to offer a lead magnet to help her convert cold traffic into new leads.

This company deals in coworking spaces and has set up a location-specific Facebook ad campaign to highlight their Minneapolis location (right in our backyard!). In addition to featuring a snapshot of the interior, they also call out ‘Minneapolis’ in the message and headline – which conveys exactly who they’re targeting and boosts the relevance.

On the Facebook landing page, they go into greater detail: revealing exact pricing, location, building amenities, and more. After scrolling through the page, visitors understand the offer so well that only highly qualified leads are likely to take the action of actually booking a tour.

This short-form landing page wastes no time in pitching a high-value eBook (guide) that speaks right to one of the key pain points for Pardot’s target audience. They’ve opened with a question that is highly relevant to their audience, included a crystal-clear & consistent headline, and explained the value of the eBook in an easy-to-read bulleted list of benefits.

To market a free trial of their software, Moz highlights a key problem they’re able to solve (improving SEO rankings), as well as the key benefit & value proposition (a one-stop shop for SEO), before inviting traffic to try the software for free. The ‘free’-ness of their offer is also repeated three times in the ad copy – an excellent way to get an audience to pay attention and reduce barriers to conversion. Why? Because free feels risk-free!

On the Facebook landing page, they offer a live human introduction and demo-video, 3 key benefits, a pinch of social proof, and a clearly-phrased, consistent call to action.

Take a look:

7 Facebook Landing Page Best Practices:

Focus on key visualsDid you know that 65 percent of people are visual learners and that 50 percent of the brain is involved in visual processing?
In fact, studies have shown that people’s natural sequence for reading involves a very specific order: image first (if there is one), then a quick scan of the headline, then reading the body copy (if the headline is interesting enough).

Consider user intent (what you see is what you get)

Ensure visual & message continuity (deliver on your promise)

Optimize for mobileForcing your visitors to scroll around and try to square up their screen with a non-responsive form, is only going to drive people crazy and drive them away from your site.

Limit your field formsThe more personal data (email, first name, last name, business name, title, etc.) you ask for, the more hurtles you’re asking people to overcome before they click on that final call to action. This is known as barriers to conversion and they work against you. Keep your form fields to a minimum (sometimes, email only).

Include a single call to actionAre you splintering your audience’s attention and intent? Are those ‘social share’ buttons necessary or noisy? Is your single call to action the most valuable point of conversion and is it well phrased?

Stay compliant with Facebook ad PolicyOne of the more common reasons for your Facebook ad not to be approved is that your landing page is not compliant with the rules of the platform. (Tips: your landing page shouldn’t trigger automatic downloads, it should contain a privacy policy, don’t include anything that prevents visitors from leaving your landing page such as aggressive pop-up boxes, keep your ad copy/ design consistent with the landing page).
Facebook also has a lot of Facebook Ad Landing Page Optimization tips that you can check out.

In conclusion:

Facebook ads landing pages make all the difference.

The goal of your Facebook campaign is not to get people to click on your ad – the goal is to convert clicks to customers – and that happens on the landing page. Facebook advertising is a powerful tool in your marketing toolbox, but you’ve got to know how to use it correctly.

Now it’s your turn!

What’s your favorite Facebook ad landing page tip to share?
(We’ll be waiting for you in the comments section below!)

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